


(she's) a loaded gun

by impulserun



Series: lady liberty [2]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-28
Updated: 2015-10-28
Packaged: 2018-04-28 15:25:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5095688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/impulserun/pseuds/impulserun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She may not be the Varya she remembers, but in many ways, Eponine Thenardier is still her mentor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	(she's) a loaded gun

“Galina,” her mentor says, her touch warm but her grey eyes cold, “Observe. This will be useful on future missions.”  

They are sitting in a café, overlooking the junction where two streets meet. Across the street, a slight young woman with auburn hair loses her balance and stumbles straight into the path of tall, middle-aged man with greying hair.

“Oh my,” she giggles, reaching up to adjust his hat. “I am so, _so_ sorry. It’s these new shoes, I’m not used to them yet – I’m so sorry, are you okay?”

“Quite alright, miss, I assure you,” he replies with a kind smile, and sends her on her way.

“I do not understand,” Galina mutters, wrinkling her nose. She is all of twelve years old, and top graduate of the Black Widow Programme. This is not what she expected to be doing when she qualified for private training under the mysterious agent who was here on loan from HYDRA.

A smile plays across Varya’s face. “Watch.”

The redhead turns the corner, and all at once, her posture changes. With a confident smirk on her face, she stalks off, hips swaying slightly and high heels clacking merrily along the hard pavement.

 _Oh_ , she realises belatedly, watching the man continue on his way none the wiser. _She’s a pickpocket._

“Do you see now, little Galya?” The brunette sips at her drink. “It is a man’s world we live in, but that does not mean we must play by their rules. We women have weapons of our own. You will learn how to wield them in time.”

Varya tosses back the rest of her coffee and puts her cup back down. “Finish your juice, Maximova. There is much that I must teach you.”

*

Galina studies under Varya for the better part of five years. She is not always around – those are the times Galina will return to practice with her fellow Black Widow operatives – and somehow, Varya is always more cold and aloof when she returns, but she is a far better tutor than the fuddy duddy instructors she studied with before.

Under Varya, she learns how to pick the most complex of locks, ways to hide in plain sight of the enemy, how to kill without the target ever realising he is dead. She learns how to apply foundation and rouge and lipstick, learns how to make herself appear unassuming and meek.

It is surprising, really, she thinks, batting her eyelashes at a stammering agent two years her senior and getting a free drink for her trouble, how easy it is. To manipulate men, now that she knows how.

She is but a few months short of seventeen when her mentor leaves with as much fanfare as she arrived.

*

It is on a mission in Italy that her employers burn her. To add insult to injury, they send hired mercenaries after her.

They are good, but they have never trained with Varya.

To kill her, they’d have to find her first.

They do, in the end, and Galina takes them down all too easily, but victory comes at a cost. For one thing, she blows all her covers. For another, she learns the hard way that hired thugs do not work alone.

*

Bleeding out in an alleyway, she thinks, as she stumbles away from the worst of the carnage, would be a really shitty way to die.

The adrenaline from the scuffle is pumping through her bloodstream still, so Galina still doesn’t feel the worst of the pain when she slumps against the cobblestone wall at her back. But the blood seeping through her clothes tells her what she needs to know.

Some protégé she is. Varya would _not_ be pleased.

The sky is blue, bluer than she has ever seen it. Galina closes her eyes.

“Nonna! Nonna, come! Come quickly!”

*

She wakes to the sound of running water, and a roof above her head. When she tries to move, her body aches; she ignores the pain and sits up anyway.

“No, no – signora, you should not be moving.” A matronly woman with greying brown hair bustles over, clucking her tongue in disapproval. “You are lucky my little Giacinta found you when she did. Three knife wounds! Bleeding from your temple! Unconscious! Signora, you are very lucky to be alive.”

Somewhat bemused, she accepts the cup of water that the matron forces upon her. Her voice rasps when she speaks. “You saved me?”

“My dear, you are not the first around these parts to have offended the Cosa Nostra.” The woman pauses. A wistful smile comes over her face. “Ah, yes. My little Musichetta’s sweetheart. Illario was always in my kitchen, telling us how he was going to change the world. How he was going to fix things. Always mouthing off, that one.” She shakes her head. “A bit of an idiot, yes, but a noble idiot all the same.”

The matron allows herself a moment more to reminisce, then seems to come back to the present with a jerk. “Why, now, signora, why are you still sitting up? Lie down and rest!”

*

She leaves not long after. It wouldn’t be fair to them, to endanger their lives like that, after all they have done for her.

Galina wanders, after that. Becomes a contract assassin. They whisper her name in the darkest streets. She doesn’t quite care. Just as long as she has enough to eat.

When the agents from S.H.I.E.L.D come to her, offering safety, amnesty, and a new life, she accepts without a second thought. There is only so much a person with her skillset can do as a freelance agent; better to have a government backing her up, even if her people call her a traitor. Her country betrayed _her_ , first.

“Welcome to America, Agent Maximova,” the bald one says with a friendly smile.

“Musichetta, actually,” she corrects him. “Agent Musichetta Esposito, if you please.”

 A new name for a new life. Varya would be proud.

*

Not long after her change in allegiance, she meets Varya again.

It’s her. The same Varya with her cold grey eyes and mismatched arms. Her hair is cropped short now – what remains of her long brown braid wafts down around her face. She hasn’t aged at all. But –

Her eyes.

Musichetta has never seen them so _empty_.

“Varya!” she calls, ducking the knife that goes whistling past her ear. “Varya, it’s me! Galina!”

Her erstwhile mentor is eerily silent; she wonders briefly if the mask has anything to do with it -

_Varya is pulling out a gun –_

“Get behind me!” she yells at the panicked engineer. When the stunned man is too shocked to comply, she dodges another knife and vaults over to him.

She has scarcely turned around when she feels the bullet pierce through her flesh –

*

The bullet they dig out of her is Soviet made. No rifling, they say. Can’t be traced. Can’t be identified.

They call her the Winter Soldier.

*

Washington happens, and Cosette happens, and suddenly they find the Winter Soldier curled around her unconscious body on the banks of the Potomac. The rehabilitation process is a long, slow one, but more and more of Eponine reveals herself as the days go by.

One of these days, she thinks she might work up the courage to approach Eponine Thenardier with her memories. The brunette is broken, and tired, and barely remembers her old life, let alone the thousands of fake memories HYDRA (and the Red Room) have force-fed her. But there’s enough of Varya in the way she moves, the way she scans the room with her body angled protectively towards Cosette, and oh, how it _hurts_.

But Musichetta’s pain can wait, she decides, as she watches Cosette burrow happily into Eponine’s side. It can wait.

(“Cosette, _ow_ ,” she complains, making no pretence of shifting away, “how are your elbows still so bony after all these years? Haven’t you been eating?”

“You don’t understand, Ponine,” she replies, pulling a dismayed face, “food just hasn’t been the same since I ate that banana.”

“What banana? You loved bananas!”

“The future has _ruined_ bananas, Ponine!” Cosette cries out dramatically, throwing an arm over her eyes, “I can never eat another fruit again!”)

There are happier times at hand.


End file.
